With the big fight — which shattered ticket-sales records by an astounding $6,165,742 — only a month away, little ol Memphis is getting lots of international press. As the excitement builds, sportswriters are clamoring to create the definitive description of mega-violent, fistic Iron Mike Tyson. Everyone, it seems, has his own unique take on the ear-biting sex-offender s unique personality.
James Lawton, writing for the London Independent, claims, [Tyson s] great fear is not death or defeat but of being seen naked. This Freudian assertion seems to be at direct odds with Tyson s known proclivity for chasing the ladies, both willing and not. In fact, just last week he told several female reporters that he s entirely unaccustomed to answering a woman s question unless she s engaged in the act of pleasuring him.
The Boston Globe s Ron Borges has written about Tyson s reading habits (he likes Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Stein because they were alcoholics and liked to party) and has a completely different take on the boxer. You think he s a monster, Borges writes. In fact, he s a Tickle Me Elmo doll who forgot how to laugh.
This curious statement hardly fits with Tim Smith s story for New York s Daily News, A Monster in Paradise. On the other hand, Smith eventually compares Tyson to the Hawaiian demigod Maui, who snared the sun and broke its legs so that it would drift more slowly across the 10,000-foot volcano Haleakala.
